Real Time Payments’ Rapid Ascent Continues, with Some Odd Footnotes

In February we performed a side-by-side comparison of the impressive 2024 growth of RTP, FedNow and Same Day ACH, albeit off relatively small bases. At 2025’s halfway point the story is much the same- solid percentage growth continues despite larger starting points, while the dollar value of these transactions raises some intriguing questions.   

Let’s start with The Clearing House’s relatively more mature RTP network (7+ years in market). RTP processed 107 million real-time transactions in Q2. It continues to deliver quarter-over-quarter growth of 8%, putting it on track to match 2024’s 35-40% annual transaction growth.  

FedNow, which launched in mid-2023, has a lot of catching up to do. Our 2025 BIGGo Card anticipated a tripling of FedNow volume in the current calendar year. It turns out we lowballed- FedNow should complete that tripling by August and has an outside shot at a six-fold increase by year-end.

Here’s where “fun with numbers” comes into play. Thanks to its lower baseline number, FedNow’s quarterly growth rate blows away RTP’s (62% vs. 8%). FedNow can also tout its roughly 1,400 FIs in production versus 1,000 for RTP. Nonetheless, the fact remains that it takes RTP less than 3 days to amass the 3.4 million transactions FedNow processed in the entire first half of 2025.

Dig into average transaction value and things get even weirder. In February RTP increased its maximum transaction size from $5 million to $10 million. It points to this change as the driver for average dollar value more than quadrupling, to roughly $4,500. FedNow also raised its limit, from $500,000 to $1 million, in conjunction with the release of new risk mitigation tools (note than for both FedNow and RTP, individual FIs can elect to set lower transaction thresholds).

Yet FedNow’s average transaction during Q2 was for more than $115,000, despite a system max set at one-tenth that of RTP. And since FedNow’s higher cap didn’t go into effect until late June, it’s reasonable to expect a further jump in average transaction value in Q3. FedNow is already processing half of real-time payment dollar throughput, despite handling less than 2% of the transactions.

Which brings us to Same Day ACH- instant payments’ slower-but-perhaps-fast-enough cousin. Same day volumes are basically triple those of real time, in terms of both transactions and dollars moved. It also means that Same Day’s average ticket size of $4,825 is on par with RTP’s (it had been well above until RTP increased its limit) despite its cap of $1 million matching FedNow’s.

This implies some very different use cases across networks. For instance, the appetite for seven-figure transactions points to B2B (and likely inter-bank) demand. The continuing increase in average value also suggests the market has yet to identify a killer consumer app to generate retail volume.

It’s widely believed a share of Zelle volume is processed through RTP; if true, this platform likely supports a bifurcated mix of low- and high-value transactions. It would be helpful if RTP and FedNow also disclosed their median transaction value or better yet, a histogram of volume by ticket size.       

I realize the cohort of payment nerds that cares about this topic as much as I do could probably meet in a Kia Soul, but perhaps more robust data will emerge as volumes become more meaningful. Despite their steep growth curves, the combined volumes of these three networks remain less than one-fifth that of supposedly dead paper checks.

2025 June YTD        # Transactions          $ Value               Avg Xn Val         Max Xn Value

Same Day ACH           662 Million                $1.9 Trillion              $  4,825              $  1  million

RTP                                 206 Million                $645 Billion            $   4,500            $10  million

FedNow                        3.4 Million                  $294 Billion            $   115,332           $  1  million